


streetlight sun

by singsongsung



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, School Reunion, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-01-27 21:58:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12591416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: He senses her before he sees her, feels the air shift in the gymnasium.Written for the prompt:meeting again at a high school reunion.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr. Only s1 canon applies. 
> 
> Title from "Hot Tonight" by Tokyo Police Club.

 

He senses her before he sees her, feels the air shift in the gymnasium. Through all the chatter, he can somehow hear the precise clip of her four-inch heels on the floor, and despite the growing number of people in the space, he can smell her heady perfume. He knows she’s coming, and yet, his heart still clenches up tightly when he hears her smooth-as-honey voice.

“Hey, Archiekins,” she says and for an instant he can feel her hair between his fingers, her silk slip so smooth against his palms, her arm hooking through the crook of his as he walked with her down the hallways of this very building.

He turns around and finds that she’s even more beautiful than before. “Hey, Ronnie.”

She smiles at him. He can remember every one of her smiles: the soft ones, the fake ones, the ones that preceded laughter. This one - it’s just a little nervous, like on the day she asked if he really liked her. Head tilted slightly to the right, she says, “I hope this isn’t a surprise.”

Archie shakes his head. “Betty told me she was bringing you.”

“Yes, I’m lucky our very own J.D. Salinger has such firm dates on that book tour so I could call dibs on Betty’s plus-one.”

He shoots her a small smile instead of replying; he’s not quite sure what to say. After a silence that stretches too long, he manages to find words: “We missed you at the wedding.”

The sparkle fades from Veronica’s eyes, replaced by something wistful. “I missed you, too,” she says quietly, lifting her gaze slowly from her glass of wine to meet his eyes, and Archie’s heart stutters around like he’s a fifteen-year-old kid watching a girl in a cape stride into his favourite haunt with a hint of a smirk in one corner of her mouth.

Kevin descends on them then, delighted to see Veronica, and as they laugh, clutching each other in a hug, Archie pours the remainder of the beer in his glass into his mouth.

He’d offered her a platitude, words that very well could have been meaningless - and she’d met him with something so much more personal, something that echoes repeatedly in his head.  _I missed you._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archie doesn’t speak with her again until much later in the evening, when he steps outside to get some air. He spent the last twenty minutes holding Betty’s slumbering infant son, and when he handed the baby back he felt so empty - and looking around the gym, at all the people who had once been such significant parts of his life, the feeling only increased.

Veronica is sitting on the steps that lead to the school’s main doors, her arms wrapped around herself; the summer breeze is growing chilly now that the sun has set. “Hi there,” she says, looking up at him.

“Hi.” On instinct, he shrugs out of his blazer and drapes it around her shoulders. He hasn’t seen Veronica in so long that he doesn’t really know how to act, can only do what’s familiar, and with her, familiarity exists in habits over a decade old, in the desire to be the boyfriend she deserves.

“Thanks,” she says, a single note of surprise in her voice.

“Sure.”

She sighs. He used to be able to get her to make that sound, halfway between contentment and wanting, with his lips along her neck and a hand sneaking under her shirt. “It’s so surreal,” she murmurs. “Being back here.”  

“Yeah. I bet.”

“Archie… ” She presses her lips together and he notices that her lipstick is worn away at the corners of her mouth. “I really do regret how things ended with us.”

A lump lodges itself in his throat. “I do, too, Veronica,” he says on a sigh of his own. “It wasn’t - I hope you don’t think it was all your fault. I was in a really shitty place then.”

“You were going through a trauma. You’d just witnessed your father getting shot.”

“Yeah, but… I shouldn’t have blamed you. Your family.”

“I understood, Archie. Not that it didn’t hurt, but - I understood. When my parents wanted to move back to New York, it just seemed…”

“Easier,” he fills in softly.

In a whisper, she agrees, “Yeah.” She pulls his jacket a little more tightly around her shoulders. “Still. I should’ve said a proper goodbye.”

He shrugs, and in a gentle voice, gives her the out he’s always trying to give himself: “We were kids.”

“We were. I told myself that, even then. High school sweethearts don’t end up together. If they do, it’s the exception. Not the rule.” There’s a little tremor in her chin. “But then Betty and Jughead, they - they did it, they were the exception, and I just - ” She exhales slowly. “I just couldn’t handle it. The what-if of it all. I couldn’t go to that wedding and think those thoughts and then have to look at you on the other side of the altar.”

He stares at her. “You didn’t go because of me?”

The depths of her eyes seem to go on forever. “Oh, Archie,” she breathes. She lifts a hand and skims her fingertips over his jaw so gently that the sensation hardly feels real. Her voice so packed with fondness that it’s choked, she says, “You idiot.”

She lets her hand fall from his cheek.

He catches it.

 

 

 

tbc.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: "I don't know why I'm crying."

Three weeks after the reunion, Archie makes another trip from Illinois to New York, ostensibly to visit Betty and Jughead and the baby. He plans to stay with them in Brooklyn for the weekend, so Veronica invites herself over for dinner on the Friday he arrives. She can hear Betty’s raised eyebrow over the phone, but she ignores it. 

Her stomach flips and twists on the way there. Traffic is moving at a crawl, and from the backseat of the car, she can see the sunset burning through the sky, peeking out at her between buildings. She hooks two fingers into the strand of pearls around her neck to ground herself. 

She breezes into the third floor walk-up with a bottle of wine in one hand and a fresh-baked baguette in the other, kisses each of Betty’s cheeks, and wraps her arms around Jughead in a hug he doesn’t seem entirely prepared for. By the time she turns to Archie, it feels impossible to fill her lungs properly when she inhales. The smile he gives her is knowing, like he can see the nervousness she’s trying so hard to hide. 

“Hey, Ronnie,” he says, and she feels like she’s fifteen years old again when he wraps her up in a hug and she finds her face pressed against the soft fabric of his henley. He smells different, but it’s a good kind of different. She doesn’t want to let him go. 

She does, though, and she follows Betty into the nursery to look at Fitz, who is sound asleep in his crib in a little green onesie printed with elephants. Betty smoothes fingers very tenderly over her son’s barely-there wisps of hair and says, quietly, “This is interesting.” 

“What is?” Veronica asks, pretending to inspect the baby’s mobile. 

Betty rolls her eyes. “You and Arch.” 

“I don’t know that _interesting_ is the word I’d use,” Veronica murmurs, focusing on Fitz again. “He’s getting so big, B.” 

But Betty’s eyes don’t leave Veronica’s face, somehow soft and intent all at once. “Don’t hurt him again, Veronica,” she whispers. 

Veronica’s grip tightens on one of the crib’s rails. “I won’t,” she whispers back, and Betty reaches across the sleeping baby to cover Veronica’s hand with her own. 

 

 

 

Betty’s not drinking, so Veronica splits the wine with Archie and Jughead, and then they each crack open a beer. Archie’s eyes go a little wide when she expertly uncaps her bottle with the churchkey Jughead hands her, and she raises an eyebrow at him in turn, clinking her bottle against his before she takes a long drink. She licks her bottom lip afterward, a little thrill running through her when she notices his eyes following the movement of her tongue. 

“Veronica Lodge,” he murmurs. “Always full of surprises.” 

“Always, Archiekins,” she agrees, batting her lashes and letting her leg brush against his under the table. Her black tights are so thin they’re very nearly sheer, and she can feel the warmth of his body through his jeans. Part of her wants to get him naked so badly; part of her wants to live in this moment for the rest of her life, with his eyes returning to her lips over and over again, like it’s impossible for him to look anywhere else. 

On the other side of the table, Jughead whispers something to Betty and she fails at stifling her giggles. Veronica can’t even bring herself to glare. 

 

 

 

After dinner, she finds Archie’s hand with her own and drags him out of the apartment, tossing a wink at Betty and Jughead and singsonging, “I wouldn’t wait up for him, kids.” Archie laughs, letting himself be tugged along, but two faint spots of pink appear high on his freckled cheeks, and Veronica feels overwhelmed by the fact that she put them there. She used to be able to render Archie speechless or overly talkative, stumbling through words, but that was years and years ago. It’s intoxicating to know that she has that power, still - more intoxicating than the wine and beer she can feel buzzing through her bloodstream since she was too on-edge to eat much of Betty’s lasagna. 

Veronica has plans. She wants to take Archie to Central Park and stroll down pathways with him in the moonlight, something she never did with any of her high school or college boyfriends because it felt too seriously cinematic, like a moment from a montage set to a love song. She wants to go dancing, to feel his hands against her hips and his breath on her neck. She wants to go to her favourite bar and stay there until closing, nestled in a booth with him, to drape her legs across his lap and feel his fingers tap out the rhythm of his slightly slurred words against her kneecap. She wants to bring him home with her and revel in the satisfaction of his sigh when he slides the zipper of her dress down. 

Her plans do not come to fruition. In the back of the car she called, Archie reaches over, unbuckles her seatbelt, and slides her over on the leather seat so that she’s pressed to his side. His arm curls around her shoulders, and his fingers toy with the ends of her curled hair. 

“I want to kiss you,” he murmurs into her ear. 

Veronica, who prides herself on her poise, starts slightly. “Now?” she asks stupidly. 

Archie grins. It’s so boyish that it makes Veronica think of the look on his face the first and last time she ever lead him to her bedroom at the Pembrooke. “If you’ll let me,” he says, tilting her chin up, and then he’s kissing her, softly but firmly, coaxing her mouth open with his own, kissing her like a memory catapulted into the present. She remembers this, remembers _him_ , and it pulls a quiet, fragile sound from the back of her throat; it propels her closer to him, pushes her body tightly against his, steers her hands up and prompts them to land on either side of his neck. 

When they pull apart, Veronica finds that the grin is still on place on Archie’s face, a certain, stunned breathless quality present in it now - and that her eyes are wet. When she blinks, a single tear rolls slowly down her cheek. 

“Ronnie,” Archie says very quietly, stroking his thumb along her jaw. She can hear the question in his voice, and she shakes her head. 

“I don’t know,” she says. Another tear drips out, this time from her other eye, creating twin tracks on either side of her face. “I don’t know why I’m crying.” 

Archie kisses each of her tears, his tongue stroking lightly along her skin before his mouth finds hers again. 

In the softest voice, against her lips, he says, “I do.” 

 

 

fin.


End file.
